Are Your Emotions Making You Fat?

If you are like most women I work with, you know what you need to do lose weight and improve your health, yet once you get home after a long day at the office, you find that you don't make the best decisions. Are you frustrated and wondering why you let it fall apart the minute you walk through the door? I find that many women are emotional eaters, and it doesn’t take much to trigger an emotion. In my experience, a lot of people react to their emotions by distracting themselves with food. The first step is to determine what emotion you are feeling, and strategize on how to change your reaction. For example, if stress is building up on your way home because of your never ending “To Do” list… You have to prepare supper, then you need to drive the kids to sports practice, then there’s the kitchen that needs to be cleaned up… it is understandable that this could cause some stress! I love to help my clients strategize around things just like this. One thing I offer my clients is the opportunity to get out of their own head. It’s so easy to stay stuck if you can’t see a way out. When I offer health coaching, a technique that is super helpful is to spend sometime brainstorming possible solutions. One thing you may be able to do is to take some of the stress off of having to prepare supper every night is to plan ahead of time. To do this, you could prep some meals over the weekend, so all you have to do is reheat when you get home. You could also buy items that will help make meal time easier, like sliced veggies, microwaveable organic brown rice and a crock pot. This will help free up your time. I find that if there are unhealthy choices in the house, those are going to be the first things you gravitate towards. Instead, have those healthier choices on hand and at eye level. Research shows that you're more apt to grab healthy food (or unhealthy, for that matter!) if it's in your line of sight. So use that to your advantage and have a veggie platter coupled with cheese or hummus at eye level in the fridge, or maybe a bowl of fruit out on the counter. This will help you get into the habit of grabbing healthy alternatives, instead of going for the quick, unhealthy choices. If you find that you walk through the door starving every night, take a closer look at how often and what you are eating during the day. How often are you eating? What types of foods are you eating? Try to make a habit of eating every three to four hours. And make sure each meal and snack includes a complex carb, healthy fat and protein. This winning combination will help keep your blood sugar balanced and your stomach feeling full. You'll find that it’s much easier to make better choices when you get home if you’re not walking in through the door ravenous!